No More Prayer by Elizabeth Obadina - inspired by a '555' prompt -

 ‘No prayer,’ tiny boy says; a trembling croak that barely rises above the wind in the trees,

P39 Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Chapter Five, fifth page, line 5)

The day had begun so well. Tiny Boy had woken as the sun crept over the horizon filling the room with the warm rays of daybreak. It was Sunday. A morning of prayer and praise followed by a picnic on the beach. It was Tiny Boy’s favourite day of the week, a day when he got to wear his best clothes, when he got to ride with Auntie in the big moto and a day when he could escape the city to a place where the sky reached down to kiss the trees and and the distant blue of the sky melted into the steely blue of the ocean and nothing came between them. No house. No office. No market. Nothing. 

Somewhere in the back of Tiny Boy’s mind he stored visions of another place where the sky reached down to touch the earth, only there were no trees and no ocean in that place. although the vastness of the earth suggested that you should be able to see something; a forest, a sea, a lake perhaps each time you crested a hill. But always there was nothing just more rocks, exhausted farms and dusty plains shimmering in an ochre glow for as far as the eye could see. These were the parched lands that came to Tiny Boy in his dreams, dreams from which he usually came to with a start and sweating, even though the bedroom was cold. He was lucky for he had been allowed to spread his sleeping mat in the corner of Auntie’s bedroom on a thick Persian rug Auntie had brought back from one of her shopping trips to Dubai. It made the other house-helps jealous to know that Tiny Boy slept with air conditioning, but they knew better than to complain. Everyone understood that Tiny Boy held a special place in their Madam’s heart.

Today however all jealousies were put aside.

Hope and Charity would follow Auntie to church and then to the beach bearing food for the picnic. They would travel in the old Peugeot behind Auntie’s Mercedes along with Army Sergeant Coker who was spending his day off earning a little extra as Auntie’s bodyguard and flirting with the girls. They tailgated the Mercedes allowing nothing to come between them and the party travelling in the car ahead. And when the traffic ground to a halt Sergeant Coker would hang out the passenger window and wave his gun at other motorists to move aside to let Auntie’s little convoy pass. In front of Auntie’s Mercedes rode two off duty policemen on a spluttering motorcycle; they were also moonlighting in uniform and were also brandishing sub machine guns to clear the way for the Mercedes to nose forward through the traffic jam. The policeman riding pillion would leap off the dawdling bike and jog ahead, banging the car roofs of drivers who wouldn’t pull over quickly to let Auntie pass before leaping back on to his mechanical steed and leading the picnic party forward.

In this way their little group pulled through the go-slow, on to the new expressway built over the homes of long-evicted squatters and on to the main road out of the city and off to the beach. 

Tiny boy rested his chin on the dashboard, smiling dreamily at the thought of the food, the fun and the freedom to come. He had spent a fidgety four hours in a packed church that morning. He sang loudly. He praised the Lord for all the blessings that had fallen upon him whilst he lived under Auntie’s protection. He prayed for long life and prosperity for Auntie, and himself, and … deep down he had a feeling that he should be praying for someone else, but whom? The discomfort gnawed at him, but he couldn’t think of anyone he was forgetting. And soon, the church service was over and he was on his way to the beach. His smile grew wider and his eyes rolled skywards as his mind travelled miles away.

“Ah – to see that boy now – not a care in the world, and yet …” Auntie’s comment trailed off.

“Don’t worry my sister,” said the plump woman clothed from head to toe in white robes who was sharing the back seat with Auntie. “Don’t worry. God will cure him.”

“Night, after night, after night,” whispered Auntie, “he wakes up screaming. In the morning he remembers nothing.”

“It’s the Devil’s work my sister. The Devil,” said Mama Yemi, making the sign of the cross over her ample, white covered bosom, although she had left the Catholic Church of her youth behind her many years ago. Some habits died hard though. “The Devil,” she said softly for a third time and shivered.

The two women settled back for the long drive. Each sunk in her own thoughts whilst Tiny Boy gazed out at the road ahead, the police escort racing ahead, the palm trees on either side and the blue sky above; he was oblivious to the muttering of the old women behind him and was utterly content. 

*

An hour later the little cavalcade took a right turning off the road and into a place where vendors of water, bottled soft drinks, bread, groundnuts, pouf-pouf doughnuts and barbequed bush meat and grilled fish jostled to sell their wares to the newly arrived Sunday trippers from the city. Tiny Boy pushed himself as far back in the passenger car seat as he could. The faces pushed against the car windows scared him and once again he was thankful that he was not riding in the un-airconditioned Peugeot behind, for if he had been, there would be a forest of arms jammed through open car windows waving goods for sale under the noses of the car’s occupants. Suddenly the crowd fell back as the policemen U turned their motorbike into the cluster of traders and forced them back at gunpoint. Sergeant Coker too leapt from the Peugeot and began hollering  for the crowd to go away. The picnic party was eventually able to move forward and Sergeant Coker hung from the open car door of the Peugeot waving his gun at any trader seeking to pursue potential customers down the road to the beach. It was a dirt track and the shiny clean cars were soon coated in red dust thrown up in clouds under the tyres of the beach bound vehicles. The policemen on their motorbike pulled their neckerchiefs over their mouths and noses. Tiny Boy thought they looked like bandits.

A couple of kilometres later the cars pulled up alongside a Toyota land cruiser parked behind a large beach hut with woven walls and a thick palm thatch. Smells of cooking were coming from the barbeques already set up by an advance party of Auntie’s household overseen by her brother and his girlfriend who had recently returned from abroad. Music filled the air, palm trees shaded the sand and beyond the hot sand shimmering in the early afternoon heat was the ocean where wave after wave after wave rolled in, washing the border betwixt land and sea. Tiny Boy was transfixed by the sight. He wondered how long it would be before he would be given permission to find new friends, to play football or just to chase the waves and jump through the surf.

“Tiny!” Auntie’s voice cut through his thoughts.

“Ma,” he called and scurried to her side.

Auntie and Mama Yemi were standing close together. Auntie’s face was furrowed with anxiety but Mama Yemi’s face wore the satisfied expression of the self righteous. 

“Tiny,” Auntie explained, “you are to go with Mama Yemi. She is going to help you.”

Tiny Boy would have preferred to go with Mama Yemi after lunch, for his stomach was growling and he was ravenous. The smoke from the barbeque and the cooking fires made his hunger worse, but he had been used to being hungry. He didn’t question why he might need help.

“Tiny! Come over here man!” Tunji, Auntie’s brother was beckoning him. Tiny Boy’s hopes rose.

“Later,” Auntie commanded and turning to Tiny Boy said, “Go now.”

Mama Yemi held out her handbag for Tiny Boy to carry. He took it and wistfully trailed off behind Mama Yemi who was not heading for the beach hut but to a rather larger compound, fenced about with woven mats and shaded by coconut trees. An arch over the entrance proclaimed, “Kingdom Home – Jesus Saves” in peeling white paint and beyond the fence Tiny Boy could see dozens of people wearing white robes identical to Mama Yemi’s. Tiny Boy wondered why he had to go with Mama Yemi to church for a second time that day and wondered whether there might be food there.

*

Mama Yemi crossed the compound to where another old woman, also robed in white, was sitting in the deep shade of the church’s veranda.

“Good afternoon Ma,” said Mama Yemi making a deep curtsy to the old woman, “this is the boy I was telling you about,” and she turned to indicate Tiny Boy who promptly prostrated himself on the earth in a formal greeting.

“Come.” The old woman gestured Tiny Boy to her side. “Where is your mother, boy?” Tiny Boy fell silent. He had no recollection of ever having had a mother. 

“There was Mama Seyi,” he offered. Mama Seyi was his father’s senior wife who Tiny Boy had avoided as much as possible. He had fed from her food pot but he had always been served last, served least and was always the first to feel the lash of the koboko whip on his back if he was slow to begin his chores. He squirmed at the memory and fell silent as he remembered Mama Seyi’s children, his half brothers and sisters, taunting and tormenting him day after day.

“Witch’s child. Witch’s child. Witch’s child,” they called.

He squeezed his eyes shut to block the memory and shuddered, half expecting a stone to fly past his ear. His mouth dried as he felt again the thirst he suffered whilst hiding out amongst the  desiccated maize and sorghum of his father’s fields. Then there had been wahallah when a soldier, Tiny Boy thought it might have been Sergeant Coker, had arrived. “Follow me,” the soldier said and he had. The soldier had brought him to Auntie.

He blinked his eyes open and met the gaze of the old woman watching him closely. She pushed herself out of her chair.

“Come,” she said again, “Follow me.”

They walked across the hot open yard to the shade of the coconut trees.

Other white robed ladies had materialised around him, chalk dust was scattered on his hands and feet, a circle was drawn in the sand and Tiny Boy found himself in the centre of it.

“Kneel,” said the old woman and Tiny Boy fell to his knees.  The curtain of white robes surrounding him parted and a white robed man clasping a staff capped by a cross appeared before him. A pastor thought Tiny Boy.

“In the name of Jesus,” the man roared, “in the name of Jesus!” and the staff was stamped on the ground. “In the name of Jesus!” he thundered for a third time, “protect this boy from the reach of the Devil. Keep him safe from the claim of witches. In the name of Jesus!”

A chorus of hallelujahs and amens erupted around Tiny Boy and the women sang hymns and praised the Lord. Somewhere someone started beating a drum and somewhere amongst the white robes was Mama Yemi, dancing and singing along with the others.

The pastor handed his staff to one of the women and grasping Tiny Boy by the back of his neck with his left hand and placing his right palm firmly on the child’s forehead he forced Tiny Boy to look up.

“No prayer, no more prayer,” Tiny Boy pleaded with a trembling croak that was drowned by the wind in the coconut trees. “No more prayer.” But the pastor ignored him and grasping the child he prayed again and again and again until the sun began to set and Tiny Boy passed out with hunger.

Listening to the drumming and the singing and the praying from her beach hut across the way, the worry lines in Auntie’s face grew deeper and deeper. She had no children of her own and loved Tiny Boy dearly and so on the advice of Mama Yemi, Auntie had paid the pastor handsomely to have her nephew saved from his mother’s embrace as her dead sister reached out to him from beyond the grave night after night after night.